zonic Speaks Out

Anyone who's been following our recent coverage will be well aware of Fnatic Ltd.'s promotive endevour, the All-Star games. With the event already in motion HLTV.org prepared an interview with Asylum's zonic, who is playing for the Scandinavian region in the tournament. While the interview is mainly focused upon the All-Star Games, we touch upon such diverse subjects as girl-gaming, the skill division and the prospect of making friends through gaming. So without further ado, here's zonic.

HLTV.org: For the benefit of our readers, could you please introduce yourself and explain how you came to play in the all-stars event?

zonic: Sure. My name is Danny Sørensen, I'm 19 years old and are one of the five guys in Asylum. Walle contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to play the All-Star event, after a little thought I said yes. Unfortunately walle can't play, but im sure XeqtR will replace him well as the 'in-game leader'. :)


HLTV.org: Do you feel that events such as this are a good way to provide interesting or unique viewing opportunities for the community?

zonic: I think it's a great idea, and I also think a lot of people are going to watch the matches on Friday. Why do I think it's a great idea? It's because there's not an event like this every week, it's an exciting event so people won't easily get bored. Hopefully we can entertain the european scene and get Club-Fnatic in the spotlight :)


HLTV.org: Even though this event was brought about for the purposes of promoting Fnatic Ltd.'s latest veture, Club-Fnatic, do you feel that tournaments such as this are a good way of uniting what can sometimes be seen as a diverse and segregated community?

zonic: Well I wouldn't say it's a segregated community, many of the players know each other from different tournaments, but yeah as I said before, it's not like there is a tournament like this every week, so of course this is a fun concept. :)

HLTV.org: For the last few years women's gaming has been something of a hot topic within CS circles and the wider e-Sports scene. Many attempts have been made to integrate and encourage the female CS scene, some have been sucessful but the majority have failed to make a perceivable impact. With the release of the region's rosters one can see that there're no female participants in the teams. In what could be considered a 'fun' event once again we see female players shunned in favour of their male counterparts. If even in an exhibition event such as this women are denined a role, can there ever be hope for them in a community so distinctly divided by skill?

zonic: Oiii, tough one, I haven't read or focused on the girl-gaming scene, so I'm not an expert in this area. I don't think girls will ever get accepted the the same extent as the guys, but the girl's scene is getting bigger and bigger. A lot of female cups and ESWC running a girl's tournament is a start. I think they will get accepted in time, but a lot of people will always look down on their scene.

HLTV.org: After competing in the hotly contested atmosphere that the WEG III EU qualifiers provided, do you feel that perhaps this all-star event is a more relaxed affair and will your region's team be putting in a similar amount of practice?

zonic: I'm not going into this with 100% praticing etc. I see this as fun event, and an opportunity to entertain the scene online. I'm a bad looser, so of course I'm going to go for the win. About practice, I don't think we are going prepare much up to the event, but the other four guys are ready, and so am I.

HLTV.org: The teams for this event represent a union of some of the most highly-skilled players from their region's varying clans, even though we may practice against an opponent on multiple occasions the interaction rarely extends past the odd in-game comment or a salutory "GG" afterwards in IRC. The community are brought together in an almost autonomous fashion - united by our love of the game - and yet we rarely seem to communicate to any extensive degree with our fellow players, most tend to stick to their small cliques of friends and clan-mates. In what way has this event helped you to 'get to know' or perhaps befriend your fellow regional team-mates?

zonic: Well I know a lot of them because we're all from Scandinavia, and we have some good Internet connections which makes it possible to play Clanbase matches together etc. there are a lot of IRC channels for practicing and people are playing alot of mixes together, so I would say the whole Scandinavian scene is their own little "clique".

HLTV.org: It could be argued that since these line-ups are basically 'mix' teams; that they're not a true test of a group's skill because of the lack of preparation time and the ability to make and practice some of the more complex stratagies. Conversely, it could also be argued that this kind of event is the ultimate test of the player's abilities; your team must quickly adapt to one-another's playstyle and be able to perform to a high standard under the intense pressure that a restricted times scale enforces. What's your opinion of this event's format?

zonic: Well I think all the players are gonna see this as some CB matches, have some fun and, of course, try winning. I think its time to see the fun part of this game, I think thats the important thing, to have fun while you play.

I felt that this was an honest interview with a down-to-earth guy, who doesn't underplay his feelings on the competitive aspect of Counter-Strike. I was especially interested in his opinions with regard to certain social circles within CS. From his perspective, the Scandinavian scene seems like a tight group of players all gathered together by the game they love, much like the situation I posited in the previous questions. I'll have to admit that I found this somewhat hard to swallow, it's not that I believe he was intentionally misleading me, but I wondered: could a diverse scene really be that tight?

Coming from a UK background, the Scandiavian CS scene can often be a somewhat impenetrable entity, and I believe it's more than the language barrier and an eighty-milisecond ping difference that seperates us. Without descending into melodrama I can say that attitudes within the UK's CS scene can be somewhat caustic to the outside observer, and even to the seasoned initiates (of which I count myself to be one) a community so seemingly rife with negativity, or overly judgemental objectivity (which is really just another branch on the tree of subjectivity) appears to lie there, lurking beneath the surface.

Perhaps we could all take something, not from the Scandinavian CS scene in general (though it does have a great many positive attributes) but from the idealism that should perhaps accompany the goal that should be paramount within our communities, and from which the great times we've had together have been descended from, which is namely this: the pursuit of fun.

Thanks to zonic for answering my questions. Best of luck, Scandinavia and may we all have a share in your fortune.